LULUC: Explaining the link between deforestation and the leather industry

Land use and land use change (LULUC) refers to the study area in general – that is the study of how global land use change (commonly through human intervention) results in increased atmospheric emissions. The obvious emission is that if the forest is burnt, the emissions are directly released into the atmosphere. However, the changes to albedo (Earth’s reflection of light) and the evaporation of water (from plants) from that land will change. The other key negative that deforestation can manifest is that the land will have a different role as a carbon sink – which could be that it is no longer a carbon sink. The order of land as carbon sinks (in ascending order) are as follows:

• Ploughed plant-based monocultural land
• No-till plant-based monocultural land
• Forest (tropical)
• Forest (temperate and boreal climes)
• Pastures and grasslands
• Broadleaf forests (temperate climes)
• Wetlands

Changing a piece of land from one land type to another, results in an increase of carbon storage or in a decrease. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has written a document entitled: “Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry” which helps countries of the world to compile their national inventories on how the land is being used and how that will affect the national carbon sinks – to meet their United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) commitments. They classify land as 6 types:

1. Forest land
2. Cropland
3. Grassland
4. Wetlands
5. Settlements
6. Other - marginal (rocky, hilly, desert, ice)

Once a country has classified the area of all these types of land, the officials responsible for estimating the national carbon emission and carbon sink pattern.

History
International land has rarely stayed the same with the movements and settlements of humans; whether it was the migration from Central Africa, southwards, by the Bantu people; or the conquest of the South American Amazon by the Spanish; land use has rarely stayed the same. There are obviously pockets of ancient land and forests that have remained unaltered, and these are usually hard to reach, or protected areas that cannot be changed.

The entire planet was not originally trees and forests – as some people believe. All biomes are equally important and natural processes of change have altered the landscape. Tree evidence in the Antarctic indicates that there were very warm times before, when vegetation could grow in places we would not expect. Even historical land change must be something that we evaluate as “done – now move on”, for good or bad. So, a national inventory of land must be pragmatic and take into account deforestation, no-change/change in land function, or afforestation. Afforestation is not always the solution to increasing carbon sinks, especially in high-risk fire areas or through afforestation by alien species (Port Jackson, or Black Wattle).

The mechanism to keep track of improvements or to map depreciation of land (and soils) is usually done through ministries that track rural parameters and Africa is no exception. Most of this is now done through the use of satellite technology - which can lead to some problems.

Australia is a signatory to one of the highest intensity forest reporting programmes, the Montréal Process Working Group on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests. The accountability for any changes in forests is high through this accord and Australia’s reports are world-beating. However, the Leather Working Group put Australia on the Deforestation Risk List and required extra reporting criteria, based on a WWF (Global) report - that had been generated by satellite data. WWF (Australia) do not agree, they know that indigenous and farming communities actively (by permission) coppice trees, which satellites perceive to be canopy loss by tree removal. Similar studies have reported that between 2000 and 2023, South Africa has had a 27% reduction in tree cover (1,600,000 hectares) – most of this due to fuel poverty.

LULUC and carbon
The current annual global carbon emissions are estimated to be 37,150,000,000 tonnes and 4,100,000,000 tonnes of that is ascribed to removal of forests. It is estimated that the 23-year tree loss in South Africa is contributing to 44,000,000 tonnes per year of the global forest number just given - in other words 1% of the annual global burden from tree carbon. Of course, this number does not account for the sink activity that the land can have after the land use change - it is assumed to be zero - and in many cases this is true, especially if it is for monocrop, self-sufficient farming.

Tanneries, footwear companies, and their supply chains have a role to play. Of course, the land that they currently occupy (or will in the future) should be assessed for the effects that they had on LULUC. The supply chains that feed inputs into the leather processing they do should also be considered for any land use (especially deforestation) that they may be part of. Supply chain collaboration and initiatives that can reverse land change or encourage activities on the land that will result in carbon sink should be encouraged – these can include projects like wetland restoration (especially mangroves), but can also be reforestation projects.

Land use that involves human interventions like forests or wetlands tend to change the regional and microclimates of those communities. Projects like the Great Green Wall (a greening project in the Sahara) that looks to encapsulate desertification or restore some of the green areas of the Sahara. Regenerative farming projects that are greening parts of the Karoo and practices that prevent soil erosion and soil export from South Africa are also increasingly ways in which African companies and citizens can help increase soil carbon. With increasing soil carbon (and its water association) the return of fossil carbon back into storage and the increase in fertility of that soil can only have benefits for essentially an agricultural nation, while at the same time helping with the African and national commitments to the UNFCCC.

In the next issue: Many years ago, an attempt to preserve hides and skins using a yoghurt culture had some surprising results – the bacteria in the mixture started to unhair the hides and skins - but the skins in the presence of the lactic acid produced by the bacteria started to swell. The researchers repeated the experiment with a little more food for the bacteria and they added a touch of salt to prevent the acid-swelling. The article will examine the science and technology of this curious experiment.